I Swear My Mama Doesn’t Spy for Israel. Now, My Daddy–

Yet another dual-loyalty scandal has broken, this time an American army engineer with a Jewish-sounding name who has allegedly given secrets to Israel, some of them about nukes.

How ironic that the Times published a big piece on spying and dual loyalty
two days ago and never mentioned Israel. An omission made more glaring–realist scholar Mike Desch points out–when you consider that ten years ago
the Government Accounting Office issued a report saying that Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any U.S. ally." Or when you consider the AIPAC case in Washington…

Is the media implicated in this mess, too? Well, yeah. The dual loyalty issue
here is one in which many American Jews are engaged, consciously or
not, because of the modern definition of Jewish identity as supporting a Jewish state, right or wrong. John Judis made the same point on the New Republic site
a year ago (a comment that I believe has been ethnically-cleansed
since, leaving my blog the only record of it). Jews in the media feel funny about this stuff because they too are engaged by Jewish
nationalism but by and large have not really interrogated their
identity visavis nationalism (as Barak Obama and John Judis have). The
rationalization that liberal Jewish media guys might offer is that American and Israeli
interests are identical–a rationalization that is fraying by the
second–or that it doesn’t affect their work. I don’t buy that, it’s in the water.

Here’s another way of looking at it. Former Egypt Ambassador and Fox News commentator Marc Ginsberg is described by AIPAC Arizona in this manner:

His
younger brother’s death in the recent Israeli war [2006] made Ginsberg more
committed to Israel’s 59-year cause. Calling himself “a truly dedicated
Zionist,” he has taken up the AIPAC flag to play a crucial role in
helping Republicans and Democrats partner for a strategy to stay
involved in the Middle East. [emphasis mine]

If my brother had died fighting for
Israel, I would probably feel the same way. I don’t believe that this
background suits someone to invoke the American interest on Fox news,
or in an embassy. Yet Ginsberg’s position is considered completely legit, ho-hum. Lately he attacked Jimmy Carter, on the blue-state-tribune HuffingtonPost, all but calling him an antisemite, over the Hamas meetings. Why do I trust Carter more?

22 Responses

Jim Haygood

"How ironic that the Times published a big piece on spying and dual loyalty two days ago and never mentioned Israel."

ah ha ha ha

AH HA HA HA

I thought Phil just made that up. But OMG, it's true! It's like writing an article about communism and never mentioning Russia. So obviously, the Slimes had a concealed agenda.

Chew on this: the 50% retention threshold occurs about 3 days after reading an article. So the Slimes runs the "dual loyalty" article on 4/20, front-running the Kadish news by two days.

Nice timing. First plant the meme, "Everybody's doing it. LOTS of folks, from lots of countries, have dual loyalty." Then the Kadish story goes down easily, slotting right into the conveniently-provided analytical framework … which is recent enough to recall, but close enough to the 3-day mark that the target (that would be us) may not even remember where it came from.

Do you think that's a nutcase conspiracy theory? Then you haven't heard of "memeering" — the art and science of planting memes, without the target's conscious notice:

The Slimes itself revealed a more simplistic aspect of memeering in its article published the same day, titled "MESSAGE MACHINE: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand." Kind of like a hypnotist, ostensibly revealing the secrets of hypnotizing someone, while in fact using his explanatory spiel as an induction script to hypnotize YOU.

Curiously, many of Obama's speeches contain aspects of hypnotic induction language. Read some of Milton Erickson's books if you don't believe me. Phil came away from an Obama appearance believing he'd seen Jesus. And I don't think he was smokin' dope to celebrate 4/20.

syvanen

Ken Hoop

April 22, 2008, 4:50 pm

Last night Jewish neocon national talk show host Mark Levin simplified it for us. After (again) lambasting Carter's visit to and dialogue with interested parties, Levin fairly shouted, since Jimmy Carter is an "anti-semite" and "anti-semitism" is "treason," Carter is a "traitor."

If there are transcripts provided, please obtain and check if you believe I distort.

jim byers

April 22, 2008, 4:54 pm

I have a hair brained theory about Jewish guilt and Jewish mothers. Almost all the American Jewish men that I have known over so many years had the traditional Jewish mama who loaded them with so much guilt about not doing enough for Israel. Several of them even swore they would never marry a Jew so as to break the chain of guilt in general. This doesn't seem to be the case with the few sabras that I have known. Maybe all this craziness will fall away in another generation.

A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret,
long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online
encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history,
pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia
administrative structures to ensure these changes go
either undetected or unchallenged.

A series of emails by members and associates of the
pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle
East Reporting in America), provided to The Electronic
Intifada (EI), indicate the group is engaged in what one
activist termed a "war" on Wikipedia.

A 13 March action alert signed by Gilead Ini, a "Senior
Research Analyst" at CAMERA, calls for "volunteers who can
work as 'editors' to ensure" that Israel-related articles
on Wikipedia are "free of bias and error, and include
necessary facts and context." However, subsequent
communications indicate that the group not only wanted to
keep the effort secret from the media, the public, and
Wikipedia administrators, but that the material they
intended to introduce included discredited claims that
could smear Palestinians and Muslims and conceal Israel's
true history.

…

Openness and good faith
are among Wikipedia's core principles. Any person in the
world can write or edit articles, but Wikipedia has strict
guidelines and procedures for accountability intended to
ensure quality control and prevent vandalism, plagiarism
or distortion. It is because of these safeguards that
articles on key elements of the Palestine-Israel conflict
have generally remained well-referenced, useful and
objective. The CAMERA plan detailed in the e-mails
obtained by EI appears intended to circumvent these
controls.

In the past, CAMERA has gained notoriety for its tactic of
accusing virtually anyone who does not toe a right-wing
pro-Israel line of bias. The group has even accused
editors and reporters of the Israeli daily Haaretz of
being "extreme" and participating in "radical anti-Israel
activity." Jeffrey Dvorkin, the former ombudsman of
National Public Radio (NPR), frequently criticized by
CAMERA for an alleged pro-Palestinian bias, wrote on the
web publication Salon in February 2008 that "as a
consequence of its campaign against NPR, CAMERA acted as
the enabler for some seriously disturbed people," citing
persistent telephone threats he received in the wake of
CAMERA campaigns.

Need for stealth and secrecy

Throughout the documents EI obtained, CAMERA operatives
stress the need for stealth and secrecy. In his initial
action alert, Ini requests that recipients "not forward it
to members of the news media." In a 17 March follow-up
email sent to volunteers, Ini explains that he wants to
make the orchestrated effort appear to be the work of
unaffiliated individuals. Thus he advises that "There is
no need to advertise the fact that we have these group
discussions."

Anticipating possible objections to CAMERA's scheme, Ini
conjectures that "Anti-Israel editors will seize on
anything to try to discredit people who attempt to
challenge their problematic assertions, and will be all
too happy to pretend, and announce, that a 'Zionist' cabal
(the same one that controls the banks and Hollywood?) is
trying to hijack Wikipedia."

But stealth and misrepresentation are presented as the
keys to success. Ini suggests that after volunteers sign
up as editors for Wikipedia they should "avoid editing
Israel-related articles for a short period of time." This
strategy is intended to "avoid the appearance of being
one-topic editors," thus attracting unwanted attention.

Ini counsels that volunteers "might also want to avoid,
for obvious reasons, picking a user name that marks you as
pro-Israel, or that lets people know your real name." To
further conceal the identity of CAMERA-organized editors,
Ini warns, "don't forget to always log in before making
[edits]. If you make changes while not logged in,
Wikipedia will record your computer's IP address" — a
number that allows identification of the location of a
computer connected to the Internet.

A veteran Wikipedia editor, known as "Zeq," who according
to the emails is colluding with CAMERA, also provided
advice to CAMERA volunteers on how they could disguise
their agenda. In a 20 March email often in misspelled
English, Zeq writes, "You don't want to be precived [sic]
as a 'CAMERA' defender' on wikipedia [sic] that is for
sure." One strategy to avoid that is to "edit articles at
random, make friends not enemies — we will need them
later on. This is a marathon not a sprint."

Zeq also identifies, in a 25 March email, another
Wikipedia editor, "Jayjg," whom he views as an effective
and independent pro-Israel advocate. Zeq instructs CAMERA
operatives to work with and learn from Jayjg, but not to
reveal the existence of their group even to him fearing
"it would place him in a bind" since "[h]e is very loyal
to the wikipedia [sic] system" and might object to
CAMERA's underhanded tactics.

"Uninvolved administrators"

The emphasis on secrecy is apparently not only to aid the
undetected editing of articles, but also to facilitate
CAMERA's takeover of key administrator positions in
Wikipedia.

For Zeq a key goal is to have CAMERA operatives elected as
administrators — senior editors who can override the
decisions of others when controversies arise. When
disputes arise about hotly contested topics, such as
Israel and Palestine, often only an "uninvolved
administrator" — one who is considered neutral because he
or she has not edited or written articles on the topic —
can arbitrate.

Hence, Zeq advises in a 21 March email that "One or more
of you who want to take this route should stay away from
any Israel realted [sic] articles for one month until they
[sic] interact in a positive way with 100 wikipedia [sic]
editors who would be used later to vote you as an
administrator."

Once these CAMERA operatives have successfully infiltrated
as "neutral" editors, they could then exercise their
privileges to assert their own political agenda.

In addition, Zeq suggests making deliberately provocative
edits to Palestine-related articles. He hopes that editors
he assumes are Palestinian will delete these changes, and
then CAMERA operatives could report them to administrators
so they could be sanctioned and have their editing
privileges suspended.

Passing propaganda as fact

Gilead Ini's 17 March email provides specific advice on
how to pass off pro-Israel propaganda or opinion as fact
meeting Wikipedia's strict guidelines:

"So, for example, imagine that you get rid of or modify a
problematic sentence in an article alleging that
'Palestinian [sic] become suicide bombers to respond to
Israel's oppressive policies.' You should, in parallel
leave a comment on that article's discussion page (either
after or before making the change). Avoid defending the
edit by arguing that 'Israel's policies aren't
'oppression,' they are defensive. And anyway Palestinians
obviously become suicide bombers for other reasons for
example hate education!' Instead, describe how this
sentence violates Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. One
of the core principles is that assertions should adhere to
a Neutral Point of View, usually abbreviated NPOV. (The
opposite of NPOV is POV, or Point of View, which is
basically another way of saying subjective statement, or
opinion.) So it would be best to note on the discussion
page that 'This sentence violates Wikipedia's NPOV policy,
since the description of Israel's policies as 'oppressive'
is an opinion. In addition, it is often noted by Middle
East experts that one of the reasons Palestinians decide
to become suicide bombers is hate education and
glorification of martyrdom in Palestinian society …'"

In fact, there have been numerous studies debunking claims
about Palestinian "hate education," or "glorification of
martyrdom" causing suicide bombings (such as Dying to Win
by University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape)
though this claim remains a favorite canard of pro-Israel
activists seeking to distract attention from the effects
of Israel's occupation and other well-documented and
systematic human rights abuses in fueling violence.

Zeq specifically names articles targeted for this kind of
treatment including those on the 1948 Palestinian Exodus,
Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, Hamas, Hizballah,
Arab citizens of Israel, anti-Zionism, al-Nakba, the
Palestinian people, and the Palestinian right of return.

Interestingly the CAMERA editors also target the article
on the early Islamic period concept of Dhimmi, a protected
status for non-Muslims which historically allowed Jews to
thrive in Muslim-ruled lands while other Jews were being
persecuted in Christian Europe. Pro-Israel activists have
often tried to portray the concept of Dhimmi as akin to
the Nuremberg laws in order to denigrate Muslim culture
and justify ahistorical Zionist claims that Jews could
never live safely in majority Muslim countries.

Also among the emails is a discussion about how to alter
the article on the massacre of Palestinian civilians in
the village of Deir Yassin by Zionist militiamen on 9
April 1948. Unable to debunk the facts of the massacre
outright, the CAMERA activists hunt for quotes from
"reputable historians" who can cast doubt on it. Their
strategy is not dissimilar from those who attempt to
present evolution, or global climate change as
"controversial" regardless of the weight of the scientific
evidence, simply because the facts do not accord with
their belief system.

Zeq has already made extensive edits to the Wikipedia
article on Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist
murdered by an Israeli soldier in the occupied Gaza Strip
on 16 March 2003. As a result of these and other edits Zeq
has himself been a controversial figure among Wikipedia
editors, suggesting his own stealth tactics may not be
working.

"We will go to war"

Zeq, however, counsels CAMERA operatives to be patient and
lie low until they build up their strength. "We will go to
war after we have build our army, equiped it trained
[sic]," he wrote on 9 April. "So please if you want to win
this war help us build ou[r] army. let's not just rush in
and achieve nothing, or abit more than nothing [sic]."

Oarwell

The timing is the most interesting part. They do this during Passover, and right before Bush Imperator's visit to Israel.

Jim Haygood's comment about the Times' "softening up" article 3 days ago is very interesting. If true, of course, it points to a rather sinister you-know-what. But WAS it just a coincidence?

Funny to see the Time's pot calling the other MSMs' kettle black on the military consultant issue. Heck, who fed Judith Miller her stuff, the false anthrax and yellow cake info, and all the rest? Santa Claus?

Phil, like you, he's of the independent Left that isn't going to back down in the face of spurious charges of "antisemitism". Sadly, the word is losing any meaning. What's even worse, is that that people that harbor a true hostility towards Jews are only proven "right" when such malfeasance comes to light.

Jim Haygood

April 23, 2008, 7:09 am

.

Good thinking, patrick! First the "dual loyalty (ex Israel)" softening-up story appears on Sunday; then the Kadish scoop gets released on "primary Tuesday" when the news is all Hillary/Obama, all the time.

Too clever by half? The most important and controversial news usually appears on Saturday, after getting released late Friday night. Secular holidays, religious holidays, and election days are even better. All standard procedure for managing the news cycle — release positive items for weekday primetime; bury negative stuff in weekends or distracting special events.

bondo

Charles Keating

April 23, 2008, 9:40 am

Some dual((?) loyalists aren't so secret, for example, Hillary who just stated on TV a few days ago, when she becomes Prez, if Iran threatened Israel she'd wipe Iran off the map. I guess McCain's catchy tune "Bomb, bomb Iran" is a hit, moving straight up the General Electionn charts.

Charles Keating

April 23, 2008, 10:01 am

On the flip side, here's an example of the revised flick, Saving Private Ryan, as reviewed in the LA Times:

Eight months ago Jason Hubbard, an Iraq veteran lost the second of his two brothers in Iraq. As a sole survivor, he was required to
leave combat operations. When he returned to the good old USA with his honorable discharge, the Army stripped him of his health care, took away his GI Bill education benefits worth up to $40,000, and demanded he repay his $6,000 enlistment bonus.
Further, he soon found not even his transitional health benefits applied to his pregnant wife nor the couple's two-year old son.

Since 9/11 the DOD had identified 51 other sole survivor military families in the ongoing war on Terror, although none happen to be related to anyone in Congress, running for Congress, or in or running for any USA governmental or mainstream media position.

Jason Hubbard's brother, Jared, a Marine, died in Iraq in 2004.
A year later, Jason and his other brother Nathan enlisted in the Army. Nathan died in a helicopter crash last August.

This is only the tip of the patriotic iceberg. For example, GIs who
do not complete reenlistment tours because they lose their legs
from roadside bombs also lose their reenlistment bonus. That's only fair too since they did not complete their combat tour as they promised on the dotted line.

Promises are important, indeed, they are contracts. Maybe we should make our campaigning politicians sign on the dotted line too?

samuel burke

One would think that the title of my talk – "The Middle East: Turning the Page on U.S. Foreign Policy" – is fairly noncontroversial, as such things go. Yet the very idea of turning the page – that is, of making a significant change – in our policy in the region is considered heresy, and not only in foreign policy circles but in Washington, D.C., generally. The reason is because our Middle Eastern policy has become hopelessly politicized, locked into a formulaic and increasingly unrealistic stance highly detrimental to our national interest yet artificially maintained by one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington.

Before we turn the page on U.S. policy in the Middle East, we must turn the page on the Israel lobby – the single most decisive factor in shaping our actions and pronouncements in that part of the world.

This kind of thing has been going on for years. However, the publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, last year was the occasion for such a firestorm of vituperation that one would have thought its attackers were referring to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or some tract by David Duke. Indeed, both were invoked in all too many of the jeremiads unleashed at the authors of The Israel Lobby. In newspaper columns, editorials, and the book review sections of all the "respectable" magazines, with a few sterling exceptions, such as Foreign Policy magazine, two distinguished scholars were smeared as bigots and worse. John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of political science at the University of Chicago and is well-known as the dean of the American "realists" and the author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, whose reputation as a serious scholar has never been questioned – until now. Stephen Walt was the dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and his academic credentials, too, have been considered nothing less than sterling – until now.

Charles Keating

April 23, 2008, 1:05 pm

It's nice to know, for example, Israeli companies are given the job of developing programs to guard our nukes and get data dumps and engage monitoring of our domestic phone systems.
With the chief of Homeland Security being who he is, what average American could feel more safe? The cute thing is, virtually no ordinary Americans even know such things.

Hi. In the future I'm going to keep here links to their sites. But I do not worry about the sites where my link is removed. So if you do not want to see a mountain of links, simply delete this message. After 2 weeks, I will come back and check.

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